Graelyn Brashear

Graelyn Brashear began her career in journalism at New Jersey's Asbury Park Press, where she covered municipal beats for number of Jersey Shore towns, wrote features, and formed a deep attachment to newsrooms and the kind of people who fill them. She moved on to online news network Patch.com in 2010, where she served as a local editor for the small town of Barnegat. She joined C-VILLE as news editor in March of 2012, and while she remains the staff's token New Jersey apologist, she's very happy to be back in her native Charlottesville.

If not a Bypass, then what? That’s the question being put to a committee of local and statewide elected officials, business leaders, and environmental advocates tasked with advising the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) on how best to spend the $244 million allocated for the scrapped Western Bypass around Charlottesville. The advisory panel of 10 meets […]

When law enforcement officials announced the launch of a new task force to combat human trafficking in the western part of the state late last year, they called for broad action to stop a growing problem. “Human trafficking is an emerging issue in the Western District of Virginia, one that must be met with a […]

Mary Buford Hitz was in her late 20s when Hurricane Camille’s devastating floods hit Nelson County on the night of August 19 1969, killing 153 people in a few hours and forever changing the mountain landscape. Hitz, a Richmond native who now lives in Charlottesville, was staying on family property in Afton that late summer […]

Albemarle County is facing its first property tax rate increase in years, and it’s a doozy: After a series of workshops that ended earlier this month, the Board of Supervisors advertised a rate of 80.8 cents per $100 of assessed value. That’s a hike of 4.2 cents, which translates to a tax bill of $2,279 […]

Virginia’s whirlwind regular legislative session has ended, but with a budget left to pass, lawmakers have yet to put Richmond in their rear-view mirror. All eyes are on March 24 and the start of a special session and an expected showdown over Medicaid expansion. But it hasn’t been all deadlock and drama. Now awaiting the […]

A month ago this week, UVA President Teresa Sullivan sat at a long table in Newcomb Hall, one of six college leaders on a panel addressing sexual assault on college campuses around the country. The discussion was part of a two-day national conference billed as a proactive effort to solve what Sullivan called “one of […]

A Belmont mini-market transformed into a catering hub. A company that opens up the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to vacationers through a network of homestay houses. An eyewear line featuring glasses with removable lenses and exchangeable frames. These are some of the business ideas born in Charlottesville that debuted as part of a pitch competition, […]

Ever had a hip replaced? Tonsils removed? Broken bone set? How much did it cost? And not your out-of-pocket costs—what was the total pricetag for the procedure? If you managed to find out, the number could vary wildly. “Chargemaster” prices—essentially, a hospital’s sticker price for a given procedure—are often hard for patients to unearth, and […]

Our Education Beat coverage appears thanks to a partnership with Charlottesville Tomorrow. The Charlottesville School Board last week considered changing school start times for the 2014-15 school year so the elementary school day would begin before the middle school day. Under the proposal, students in grades pre-K through four would start school at 7:50am, rather […]

Each week, the news team compiles upcoming meetings and events in Charlottesville and Albemarle we think you should know about. Consider it a look into our datebook, and be sure to share newsworthy happenings in the comments section. The Charlottesville Planning Commission meets from 5:30-11pm Tuesday, March 11 in Council Chambers at City Hall. The […]

When your hometown is burning and you’re thousands of miles away, what do you do? For locals with personal ties to Caracas and Kiev, the answer is: You worry, you watch Twitter, and you keep your phone charged. “I call every couple hours that it’s possible, when it’s daytime there, and I’m asking, ‘Are you […]

This story includes reporting from a previous article that ran last Thursday. The day before a marathon public hearing that wrapped with a local vote to oppose the Western Bypass last Wednesday, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) ended its year-and-a-half-long silence on the project by sending the Virginia Department of Transportation back to the drawing […]

Update: Wednesday 12:38pm Citing a conflict of interest, Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman has recused his office from prosecuting the woman charged with breaking and entering, abduction, and malicious wounding in an incident involving State Delegate David Toscano’s wife Nancy Tramontin on Monday, February 24. “I have known David and Nancy for many, many years […]

Wednesday was a big day for Bypass opponents. For weeks, all eyes had been on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, whose new left-leaning, anti-Bypass majority voted to hold a public hearing yesterday on the controversial road. But the seven-hour meeting and the board’s ultimate vote to pass a resolution opposing the Bypass were upstaged […]

A city elementary school teacher arrested on child pornography charges on February 10 will remain behind bars unless a forensic psychologist can determine that he poses no risk to himself or others if released on bond, Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Jay Swett ruled in the second of two back-to-back bond hearings Wednesday. More details of […]

Regal Cinema’s movie theater monopoly in Charlottesville has ended, and the new kid on the block is planning to serve up something sure to have local cinephiles salivating: a Downtown theater that offers upscale food and cocktails along with indie film fare. William S. Banowsky, Jr., owner of Violet Crown Cinema in Austin, is partnering […]

What do the walls of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, the window sills of New York City’s Rockefeller Center, and Martha Stewart’s kitchen counter have in common? They were all carved out of the ground 25 miles southwest of Charlottesville. Now Alberene, the Schuyler soapstone company whose quarries produced those and countless other pieces over the last […]

“Can your organization really afford to NOT have a high profile presence on VisitCharlottesville, particularly if your competitor does?” That was the sales pitch in an e-mail sent last month to Jody Kielbasa, director of the Charlottesville Film Festival, by an Arizona company called Destination Travel, a contractor hired to push ads on the website […]

Since last November’s elections removed from state and local office some of the biggest champions of the proposed Western Bypass, the decades-long debate over whether to build the 6.2-mile, $244 million road around Charlottesville has been in a holding pattern. Albemarle County has seated new anti-Bypass appointees on the area’s Metropolitan Planning Organization, which could […]

This story is part of our 2014 health issue, which also includes articles on concussions in young athletes, rhabdomyolysis, and gluten intolerance. Just over four years ago, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force—an independent, federally funded panel of physicians—rocked the cancer community when it changed its breast cancer screening guidelines, recommending that women get mammograms […]

Albemarle County’s draft water protection ordinance, quietly submitted to the State Department of Environmental Quality last week and set to become local law after brief public review in June, is a long-awaited road map to implementing federal- and state-mandated reductions in pollution from stormwater. Within its 47 pages are rules that will impact development in […]

For a brief moment last week, it looked like the towering unfinished shell of what was to be the Landmark Hotel was doomed to be reduced to rubble, as the Charlottesville Planning Commission declared the structure blighted and debated demolition as a fix: Should the city, as former commission chair Genevieve Keller suggested, “un-Landmark the Landmark”? […]

Hollymead embezzler sentenced The county woman who pleaded guilty in October to embezzling more than $73,000 from the Hollymead Citizens Association will serve 15 days in jail for her crime, according to reports from NBC29 and The Daily Progress. The rest of her five-year sentence was suspended. Patricia Cuthbert, who served as the treasurer of […]

Albemarle County threw out a plan to privatize trash and recycling disposal last week in the wake of fierce opposition from residents, revving up the argument over who should handle solid waste in the region—the county or private contractors. A proposal agreed upon by the previous Board of Supervisors to quit funneling money to the […]

Charlottesville Area Transit manager John Jones likes to relate a piece of advice about public service passed down to him by an Ohio city manager early in his career. “He said, ‘Son, I’ll tell you one thing about this: It’s a dangerous business. The danger is you put something out there, and then someday you’ve […]

Charlottesville’s second Better Business Challenge, a year-long sustainability competition for local companies, wraps up in May, but founder Teri Kent wants business owners to know there’s still plenty of time to get onboard—and save a lot. Kent, creator of local environmental blog Better World Betty, kicked off the first challenge in 2012 as a way […]

All 6.2 miles of the Western Bypass have come under close scrutiny since the latest plans for the long-debated road around Route 29 in Albemarle County were released last year, but right now, all eyes are focused on a mile-long stretch a few thousand feet northwest of Hydraulic Road. Last August, the keeper of the […]